The athletes on the Winters High School cheer team had an extremely successful season and officially made their way into the world of competitive cheer on Nov. 10. When the cheer squad heard about the Northern Section Cheer competition, they decided to rip off the band-aid and see what they could do.
“I really didn’t know what to expect. Competitive cheer is a whole new world so the girls and I went into it knowing that it would be a great learning experience,” said head cheer coach Sterling Davis.
The competition wasn’t something the team had anticipated participating in which meant that Davis and Rachel Calvert, assistant cheer coach, only had a very limited amount of time to choreograph an entirely new routine from the ground up.
“At first I thought that I might be able to use some of the elements and pieces from halftime show routines, but after reading over the scorecard and the time regulations we had to start from scratch,” explained Davis.
While having a brand new routine was not ideal, especially since the squad members decided to enter the “advanced” level of the competition, they were confident in their ability to put in the work.
“We have come so far this season and the team wanted to see what they were truly capable of doing compared to other teams,” said Davis.
Competition cheer is very different from what the fans see during the halftime show. Normally a routine choreographed for the purpose of pure entertainment. For competitive cheer, there are many different elements involved with only 10 percent of the routine being dance.
“The largest portion of the routine was stunting so Rachel was a huge asset in figuring out how to incorporate the stunts and pyramids that we needed to get a good score,” said Davis.
